1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to online social networking websites, and more specifically to methods and computer program products for facilitating the operation of such online social networking websites using data provided by individuals accessing such sites world-wide.
2. Related Art
In 1929, a Hungarian author named Frigyes Karinthy published a volume of short stories titled Everything is Different. One of these short stories was titled “Chains,” or “Chain-Links.” The story addressed many of the problems that would captivate future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory. Specifically, he believed that the modern world was shrinking due to the ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. In part due to technological advances in communications and travel (as it was in 1929), friendship networks would grow larger and span even greater distances. Karinthy posed that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the increased density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.
As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story, the characters create a game out of this notion. He writes: “A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.” Karinthy, Frigyes. Chain-Links (translated from Hungarian and annotated by Adam Makkai and Enikö Jankó). This idea both directly and indirectly influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks. Thus, Karinthy is often regarded as the originator of the notion of the “Six Degrees of Separation” theory.
Another key thinker in the field was Stanley Milgram, an American researcher in experimental social psychology at Harvard University. Beginning in 1967, he publicized a set of experiments to investigate the so-called “small world problem.” This problem was rooted in many of the same observations made decades earlier by Karinthy. That is, Milgram and other researchers of the era were fascinated by the interconnectedness and “social capital” of human networks. The similarities between the two authors are remarkable. While Karinthy spoke in abstract and fictional terms, Milgram's experiments provided evidence supporting the claim of a “small world.”
By the 1960's Milgram was able to perform a study whose results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately six friendship links, on average. Because these studies were widely publicized, Milgram is also, like Karinthy, often attributed as the origin of the notion of “Six Degrees of Separation.”
One school of thought on six degrees of separation is that a few well-connected individuals hold the keys to being able to connect anyone in the world. According to Malcolm Gladwell, who popularized the term in his 2000 book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little Brown, ISBN 0-316-31696-2), “connectors” are people in a community who know large numbers of people and who are in the habit of making introductions. Connectors usually know people across an array of social, cultural, professional and economic circles, and make a habit of introducing people who work or live in different class structures. Although connectors are rare—only one in several thousand people might be thought of as a true connector—they are very important in society and in influencing trends.
Another school of thought is that social search is capable through intermediate to weak ties of different social networks without hubs or connectors and that these connections disproportionately rely on professional associations. Both approaches demonstrate that there is a strong likelihood that everyone in the world is connected.
The theory of Six Degrees of Separation is now widely known and has been thoroughly examined in academic work dating back to the 1960s. Most notably, Milgram found that most individuals are only six steps or six degrees away from connecting to any other individual by starting with their immediate circle of contacts and branching out. This phenomenon has also been known as the “Small World” theory. Several experiments have been performed to test this theory. Several social networking websites and systems exist that allow individuals to upload contacts and invite others to join their “social network” by opting into the website through signing up and/or adding their own contacts to the system. These websites and systems presume that many disparate social networks exists and are primarily focused on qualifying the links through having others verify that the relationship connection is valid.
Today, there are roughly 100 social networking sites on the Web. Only a handful, have communities of more than a few million. To date, no site has tried to complete the “small world” experiment online in an open forum. Further, these sites are “closed” systems where registered users may only interact with, and understand their relationship to, other registered users.
Given the foregoing, what are needed are methods and computer program products for facilitating the operation of online social networks that overcome the limitations described above with respect to the small world theory.